


love with her face turned to the wall

by peradi



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Force Bond, Kylux - Freeform, M/M, kind of pretentious, not reylo don't worry plz come back, what is love baby don't hurt me
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 13:50:10
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8847514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peradi/pseuds/peradi
Summary: Kylo Ren and Rey: a Force bond and conversations about love, family and Armitage Hux.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I liiiiivvvveeeee. 
> 
> Yup, that's right; back in the fandom, fear me, FEAR ME. Below is my attempt at writing Kylux. It's uh. Well, You could possible call it fluff, maybe.

Rey is used to blistering heat and bone-curdling cold -- she comes from the desert, after all, where day chars the skin and night leaves a crust of frost on the dunes -- but nothing in her experience has prepared her or the slow-creeping _damp_ of the planet Albion, where the Resistance has set up its new base. Rain dribbles from an iron sky near constantly; a break for sun once in every three days or so; and even then the light is wan and watery. At first the abundance of water was sheer bliss; no more thirst, not even a hint of it; everywhere she looked, beautiful glistening pools, silver and dark and shining. But now: she’s sick of it. She’s sneezing constantly, a thickness at the back of her throat no matter how much bacta she glugs, and mornings begin with wringing the wetness from her hair -- there’s always a leak of some kind in her shed, no matter how well she patches it.

She can build heat-proof cold-proof _theft-proof_ hideaways from scrap and spit and prayer, but the water of Albion slinks past the best of her defences and lands -- _splat!_ \-- on her brow, triumphantly waking her up.

 _Ha! Desert-girl I win again,_ she imagines it saying.

Giving things a voice is a trait born of long days and nights and months and years spent all alone: her shack spoke to her; her doll; the helmet with the skull bleached white inside she’d fished from an old starcraft. And now she imagines the water as a singsong arrogant brat; her lightsabre as an old, wise woman; her staff as a girl her own age, but entirely more feral.

 _Sorry,_ groans her home around her: doleful. She pats the wall as she gets up.

 _Don’t worry_ , she says back: everything has a soul, or something approaching one, and it costs nothing to be kind.

Her dream flutters at the base of her skull.

Well: a dream. It isn’t hers.  

Luke warned her of the Force-bond that she and that monster Ren have now. The fight; the snow; the copper reek of blood: the consequences. The consequences of taking his threat/promise -- _you need a teacher_ \-- and forcing her way into the ugly swamps within his skull; the lessons she’d prized from within.

And now: the dreams.

 _His_ dreams.

 _At moments of -- passion, or rage,_ said Luke, and Force-above-and-around she had been prepared for nightmares aplenty, but not this.

Hux has a scar behind his left ear. It was from when his father had beaten him with the stock of a blaster. It tastes of metal, Ren fancies.

And other things: the hololight in Hux’s chambers is warmer than that in the corridors, amber and soft, and it puddles magnificently in the hollows of his hipbones, dappling over the ridges of his ribs, the gently defined muscles.

And lower --

Rey shudders in revulsion. She focuses on Finn, the brightness of his smile, and is mollified for a moment -- and then it occurs to her that Ren could well be feeling this joy, seeing Finn’s face, and she amputates the daydream.

Instead she broadcasts the thought: _dogs in the desert don’t bite someone just to see them bleed, and you do, pathetic thing,_ **_lowly_ ** _thing,_ **_COWARD_ ** _\--_

 _Stop that padawan,_ Luke says, warm and gentle --

( _gentle as the hololight on Hux’s chest --)_

( _Force’s sake, no_ )

\-- and pressing in her head.

_You waste energy on him._

_But - -_

_Tell me: which image is more potent? You raging at him, or you blissful and happy, forgetting that he was ever in your life?_

He’s right. Damn him. Rey clicks her shoulders back, rearranges the pictures on her desk: Finn and Poe and her and BB-8 and Chewie, a happy tangle. Yes.

_Better. You are here. You are loved. You are not alone and you never will be._

_I am here. I am loved. I am not alone and I never will be._

 

 

\--

 

 

Ren wakes alone.

He scratches the cigarette burns on his shoulder while staring at the ceiling. Hux and he, playing rough again. It brings a smile to his face.

And yet

( _not even dogs in the desert!)_

he isn’t satisfied. How can he be?

The girl is still out there, sharp-toothed and unworthy. _Grandfather grant me her head_ , he prays as he dresses, wincing as the rough fabric of his robes snags on the teethmarks from last night’s activities.

( _PATHETIC thing LOWLY thing_ **_COWARD_ ** _NOT EVEN DOGS IN THE DESERT -- )_

The girl is angry. Good. Anger leads to the Dark Side, it does --

( _not even dogs in the desert coward)_

\-- and if her thoughts infuriate him then that is all the better: it will grant him the strength he needs to defeat her.

But then the image shifts. The anger drains away. And rather than a snarling feral desert _thing_ he sees Rey, the littlest Jedi, cuddling that strange spherical droid; the BB-8 model. It beeps affectionately at her.

The image shifts. Now she is bringing Finn a glass of water after they’ve trained. The trooper drinks. His eyes half-shuttered. Revolting happiness, warm as milk, all about them.

Kylo Ren sleeps fitfully.

 

 

\--

 

 

Hux is a fool, and he knows it.

All that power, all that rage; the singular might of a dying star condensed into human form; the Star-Destroyer Base parcelled up into four (pleasantly muscled) limbs and a (somehow appealing) face; a Knight of pure ego and no control; the antithesis of all he seeks to build

( _order, the First Order, bleached of emotion and passion)_

and the logical thing is to, of course, abhor such a creature, shun it. And he does.

But he also wants to put his cock in it.

And when he gets the chance, he does so.

Once turns to a second time, turns to a third, a fourth; before he knows it the boy is a habit, three times a week, just as necessary to his continued enjoyment of life as his twice-daily stims. And, just like the stims, there are side effects: the stims cause nosebleeds every day at seven (regular as clockwork) and the boy causes --

\-- _something_.

Hux doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t want to know, not really: only that the idea of the boy being hurt is anathema to him.

Kylo Ren is his, his alone: his to hurt, his to maim, his to have; he _owns_ him, in the same way that he owns the First Order

( _the galaxy and all I survey_ )

and his soldiers, and more.

He dreams of Starkiller Base burning up the rebel base, Leia Organa weeping, and wakes with a smile on his face. His bed is empty. The mattress soft, the quilt thick: small luxuries he has earned.

He dresses, collar turned high to hide the shamefully dark bruise Ren left on his throat. The boy is altogether too fond of using his teeth.

Hux is fucking a feral, starving animal of a man; chaos and madness, counterpoint to his order.

He squashes the thoughts down; it would be highly inappropriate to turn up to a meeting with an erection.

 

 

\--

 

 

 _Shh, I’ll watch over you_ , Rey’s shack croons to her. The Resistance had offered her a space in their barracks, and for two nights she had slept there, but she had never slept in such close proximity to other souls before; and the amount of noise was unbearable. Every stir, every creak, every mumble: they had her on edge, looking for a threat.

A childhood alone and hungry in the sands doesn’t leave you that quickly.

She had moved to the Falcon, slept in the command chair, surrounded by the comforting, warm presence of all that venerable machinery -- but she’d lasted even less time there, woken sweating and whimpering from a vivid, awful dream (that was, perhaps, a memory; but not her own) of a little boy sitting in that same chair, watching the stars; and then a man stalking around the cockpit saying _Leia I don’t know what we can do he just -- he just likes hurting things, how can we -- how could we have made this --_ and then the same little boy cradling a half-dead bird in his lap, watching it bleed with detached curiosity.

( _NOT EVEN DOGS IN THE DESERT KILL JUST FOR THE JOY OF IT)_

( _Your anger is sweeter than summer wine --)_

Finn. Yes: think of Finn, and of Poe, and of Leia. And not of them in battle, but smiling, soft. Leia’s embrace: strong arms and the smell of engine oil, perfume, coffee. Chewie calling her _little pup_ , Finn showing her how he was learning to draw, the smell of rain, training with Luke, kindness in all its forms.

_You are here. You are loved. You will never be alone ever again._

Rey sleeps with a smile on her face.

 

 

\--

 

 

_You are here --_

\-- Kylo Ren’s lightsabre scythes through a computer display and it explodes in a flurry of fire and belching black smoke --

\-- _you are loved_ \--

\-- he wheels, snarling, spitting, hot-eyed with rage (there is something wrong with his eyes they water so it must be the smoke, the stink of smouldering machinery; damn Hux for his pride and joy, his ship, his Order, damn him) and slams his sabre into a wall, carving up into the metal, severing electronics to half of the ship, white-star sparks snapping and crackling along the lips of the wound --

\-- _you will never --_

 _\--_ and he stamps his foot, spins around, cuts open another wall. More smoke: thick and choking. A fire erupts and, somewhere, alarms wail.

\-- _you will never --_

_\-- loved --_

_\-- you will never be alone again --_

\-- and her thoughts, her thoughts in his head, he cannot dispel them. He hacks at the floor, the lights, the door. Soon, he is the only undamaged thing in the room. Stormtroopers fleeing. The scream of alarms. The hiss of sprinklers.

 _You are alone you are here you will never be loved again_.

“Ren -- _do_ stop destroying my ship,” and only one person in the known and unknown galaxy could sound quite so prim and proper when faced with such destruction.

“Fuck off.”

“Hmm -- no, I shan’t,” he says, sounding so _petulant_ . Ren hears him pick his way through the simmering puddles of fire and around fizzing wires. “What on _earth_ is wrong with you?”

Ren skims over Hux’s thoughts. Frustration, anger: a bitter, familiar cocktail.

And deeper: _my ship_ **_mine --_ **

“The whole galaxy is not yours,” Ren says. The core of Hux is possessive, rabid greed. Ren knows how Hux thinks of him

( _a feral animal)_

_(NOT EVEN DOGS IN THE DESERT KILL FOR THE JOY OF IT)_

but --- this is new --

_My Ren, my Kylo, MINE._

This is _new_ and Kylo Ren doesn’t know how to react, and so he stays still and panting, shoulders heaving, and lets Hux gentle a hand over his shoulders, then reach for his helmet clasp, and take it off.

His face is glossed with sweat, his hair an under-sea tangle. And Hux’s feelings flare warm and -- _my Ren, mine, don’t you hurt yourself --_

 _\--_ and he strikes Ren across the face. A slap: quick and humiliating.

“Do as I tell you, Ren,” he says, perfectly conversational even as he grips Kylo’s throat.

_My Ren, my soldier, mine, everything you do is mine, you are mine --_

Kylo Ren leans into his grip.

 

 

\--

 

 

“What would you do if I died?” Leia asked, years and years ago.  The stars twirled above them: the smuggler and his princess. Or, more accurately, the princess and her smuggler.

“Hm?” Han’s curled against her, post-coital and sleepy.  

“Endor’s won, but there are going to be more battles, aren’t there? So, nerfherder, what if I die in one of them?”

Han snuggled closer. “I’d bury you,” he said, “and I’d keep going. I’d look after Luke. I’d build the Republic again, any way I could.”

Leia’s startled. Her brows pull together. “You hate politics.”

“But I love you. So I’d do it for you. Because it’s what you would have wanted.”

 

 

\--

 

 

“I am here. I am loved. I will never be alone again,” Rey says as she walks, snow crunching underfoot. She’s dreaming, she knows, but there is someone here with her --  

“Scavenger, Jedi-child, feral desert girl,” and there we go, there’s the boy, the man, the monster. He creeps closer, black cloak rippling like the pelt of a wolf

(even dogs in the desert don’t -- )

Or a dog. A mangy cannibal dog, the sort she had to watch out for when she went out scavenging.

“I’m not a dog,” he says, affronted. He’s not wearing his helmet and his face looks pinched, sour -- childish. The boy his parents sent away, grown into a man.

And why did they send him away?

Because he broke the wings of birds and tormented smaller children and -- and he was cruel, even then. And they were desperate. They were scare. And Leia remembered the call of the Dark Side, and how her brother fought it off, and she trusted him; they had not sent her son to the wilds, they phoned every day, they loved him they --

“Snoke let me see the truth of my parents. They held me back. They stopped me expressing my power. They  -- “

_Not giving you your way is what made them good parents. Snoke doesn’t care for you, he’s lying to you --_

“What do you know of parents, you stupid abandoned _cunt --_ “

She’s under his skin. She thinks of Luke, his advice, _think of Finn_ \-- and she does so, Finn and Leia and BB-8, her friends. Those people she loves. Who love her.  

 _I am here. I am loved_.

“We have the same mantra now,” she says, conversationally, leaning against a black-barked tree. Above: the stars bite silver in the velvet flank of sky.

“What do you mean?”

“You’re right. We’re pretty similar, in a way. _I am here, I am loved, I will never be alone again_ \-- “

“I don’t know what you  -- “

“General Genocide. He loves you.”

Kylo shows his teeth. ”Do you really think that monsters like Hux do not love? Your Master would have you believe that I am a hulking shadow in the night, a thing with no human feeling, but I am not quite as evil as he would have --”

“Do you know what love is, Kylo?” Rey says. She’s calmer now than she has ever felt. Like sitting at the bottom of a pool and staring at the blurry shapes of drifting birds.

Luke: Force bless him and his teaching.

“ _Shut up_. Will you and my mother and my uncle will coo promises of redemption to me next time we meet? How there’s still good in me --  how I am loved, so I can be saved -- sing that pretty song and I’ll make Finn scream before he dies. I’ll make you watch. And you can stop it, you can save him, you can --”

( _join me)_

“There’s good in everyone, and evil as well. You’re a coward. You’re a monster. And the fact that General Genocide loves you changes neither of those things. You’re pathetic and murderous and foul. You killed millions of people. You will _pay_. I don’t know what promises Luke made his father, or his sister, but I’ll break your legs and pull you home. And ask General Hux this: if you had no power at all, would he still love you the same?”

 

 

\--

 

 

Ren wakes sweating.

The snowy forest had faded away. He was standing on a spur of rock, overlooking a swamp under a bright sky.

Rey and Poe, shoving each other merrily to and fro, half naked and splashing in the wet. Laughter. And then the image changing, shifting, Rey bleeding from a wound to her temple, apologising -- something about a firefight, her fault, her weakness (and Ren can't help but feel absolute glee at the pending dispute, stupid girl, Dameron is a soldier he would not forgive her weakness -- )

 

"Shh," croons the pilot, and pulls her close.

 

 

_\--_

 

 

"We can't send him away," Han says. Ben's asleep, feathers clinging to his hair.

"It's not to the middle of nowhere," says Leia, "and Han -- do you think I want him to go? But -- look, he's powerful, and he's getting more powerful every day, and you don't know the Force like I do: a child strong in it but untrained is like an open sore in reality. He'll be twisted. He'll be _hurt_. We have to look after him, we have to send him to Luke."

"Why are you showing me this?" says Ren. Rey's smile is sad.

"Because your mother told me about it."

"I -- it was some nonsense about some birds -- "

"A whole flock of wood-sparrows. You pulled their wings off."

"I wanted -- I wanted to see -- they were limiting me! Snoke said, he said, that they were holding me back --"

"They didn't give you everything you wanted. But they cared about you --"

Ren glowers, changes the image. He's fifteen, sprawled at Snoke's feet. Blood is everywhere; a flock of wood-sparrows brought in for the sake of old times. He'd cut them down. He remembers the sweet stink of blood, the pride at swinging his sabre with such accuracy --

"Snoke gave you what he thought you should want. And you -- tell me this, did you like it?"

 _Of course_ Kylo starts to say, but finds he cannot shape the words. "He gave me what I wanted," he says, sullen.

"And kept you a child. Parents who love you help you grow up. But you're still a child, Kylo."

 

\--

 

 

Someone tries to assassinate Hux at least every quarter, and this is only the latest in the long list, but this time is different. Her name is Quell. Her parents died in Starkiller Base’s bright scarlet glare; her parents and her baby sister and her aunts and her uncles. Her friends. All gone.

She’s clever, but she’s caught, and Kylo takes his time killing her.

Afterwards, his hands tacky with blood, he kisses Hux and thinks of Rey’s foolish words: no, of course Hux wouldn’t still love him the same if he were powerless; because he wouldn't’ be the same. He is his power. He is Kylo Ren, Master of the Knights of Ren, and without his power and his savagery hie is nothing. His mask and his sabre are as much a part of him  as his arms and legs. More so, because arms and legs can be replaced!

He doesn’t tell Hux he loves him.

Perhaps he does. Perhaps

_(do you know what love is Kylo Ren do you do you do you)_

_(I know what love looks like I do I do)_

and they kiss but they don’t fuck, and Ren claims it’s because Hux is already too damaged -- but it’s more than that, it is that desert girl in his head, singing across the universe, from whatever hellish planet she calls home, singing out --

_Do you know what love looks like_

_They’re lying to you_

\-- and even worse, even worse than that, _I am loved and I am here and I am not alone._

_(we have the same mantra)_

 

 

_\--_

 

 

That night, Kylo Ren strips naked. He looks at the scars criss-crossing his body. Hux gave him some. Snoke gave him others. They love him, they do. He thinks of birds. _Kill them boy_.

He is here. He is alone.

Hux loves him. Hux wants to own him.Those are the same thing, right?

He will never be alone again. He is loved.

( _do you know what love looks like I do I do)_

The next morning, Hux will come calling. The next morning Kylo Ren will use the hilt of his lightsabre to smash the general’s skull to shards. The next morning Kylo Ren will steal a ship. The next morning Kylo Ren will call _scavenger, scavenger, abandoned girl, I am not a good person and never will be but you were right. They are lying to me._

_I am here. I am alone._

_But, Force help me, I know I am loved. Take me to my mother._


End file.
